´óÏó´«Ã½

Mrs Joan Davies Date of Birth 11.1.1918

Wife of a serving officer posted to Bridport, Mrs Davies arrived in Bridport in the summer of 1941. Her story begins:

I came here after working for the ´óÏó´«Ã½ - I didn’t work for them very long - I was having a baby.

We were married at 10.30 on 3rd September 1939 - I was the last peacetime bride in Britain I should think! ... I didn’t have the big wedding that my mother had planned. But my husband and my father thought ‘Oh well, if it’s on the cheap...’ Well, I always say that’s what it was! And my husband went about a week later. He had joined up in the summer you know, before the war broke out. He had served four years in the Territorials. He served in London at the Duke of York’s Headquarters and I lived at the Royal Hospital. (In Chelsea) He was a staff officer. ... A lovely place to live as a child.

I came to Bridport because my husband was posted here. I was working at the ´óÏó´«Ã½, then I came down here and got a job as secretary to the Garrison Engineer. You know, you had to work, everyone under 21 or 22 had to work ... until I had my baby, and then I gave up work. My husband got posted off quite quickly and I stayed here because my mother didn’t want me to go back to London with a small baby.

I was here when Bridport was bombed They had one on a Sunday afternoon. I can’t re,member when the other one was - was it December? I think at lunch time. We only had the two. My husband’s office was above the Westminster Bank - he had to stay out of the way for some days, to make sure that it was all quite safe. It used to amuse me, the way Bridport people talked about being bombed, having been in London for most of the Blitz.

There were not many coupons when you had a baby, and by the time you got all the nappies and the other things that you needed there wasn’t very much left. But we used to ... we three or four friends of the same age, and we nearly all got pregnant one after the other and we used to lend each other clothes and shoes - so we managed. It was eighteen coupons for a dress. I can’t remember how many we got. I think it was thirty - it wasn’t very generous. But we managed between ourselves.

Food was no problem. We had enough. We had a friend who was a farmer, and I was never short of eggs. On the whole, Bridport wasn’t badly off. The fish train came in every morning. You could always get fish. Meat didn’t seem to be all that scarce, compared with my mother in London. We got milk as well - she had had a pint a week. No, we weren’t too badly off.

There were plenty of dances and we had two cinemas, the Palace and the Lyric. And they changed their programmes twice a week, so that as quite good really. But that was about all I think. I used to come down West Bay and swim. They used to check that we were local - only local people were supposed to use the beach. They didn’t encourage trippers though.

I worked for the WVS. And I was a member of the Women’s Institute as well. And during Exercise Yukon (the rehearsal for the Dieppe landing)my husband was Compensation Officer and spent his time on the roof of the ‘Bridport Arms’

© Copyright of content contributed to this Archive rests with the author. Find out how you can use this.